Ni Un Día Más De Tu Muertos

I    
your fingers twist  
about the neck    
of the black tuned vihuela    
   
sounding the chords,    
your cantata    
of its dispossessing love    
   
in wails begun    
pale, fatal words,   
the disconsolate music    
   
lamentations    
in childhood shrouds,    
your specters appearing real  

you beckon, come, Festival of the Dead    
   
II    
you sing the graveyards in your family home,  
the stolen icons of your sacred soul    
remade in markers of the lurid death,    
in monuments, Formica and cement,  

unliving songs composed in black emblems,    
as melodies poison, I will depart    
as claws extend from your caressing verse    
to tear their stains, you see me vanishing    
   
display for me your sacrificial dance,    
the open legs, the coda of your pain,    
indulgent anthems seek to take me in,    
the moldered steps, knowing that I have gone    
   
in costumes of you, I will not regale    
the carnival of denigrated love,    
I will not dress in bleached bone serapes    
I will not lay tables among your dead    
   
your sorrows are the spoils of the damned,    
resound in echoes of the ghost applause,    
I will not bear the hard tied skull face mask      
so you may sing my beauty at the stage    
   
not one more day leading your corpse parade,    
flying los voladores in the graves,    
heart chilled death songs among morbid crosses,    
not one more day among these broken stones    
   
no, ni un día mas de tu muertos    
   
III    
sing the cold misery of your safe tomb,    
incant the long departed, your comfort,    
their audience to sleep and wake with you,        
I refuse your nocturns of stillborn life    
   
I will remain    
In warm sun’s light,    
Find place among the living    
   
Sing holy hymns,    
Embrace, desire,    
And I will be yours no more